


a hundred miles through the desert repenting

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Gen, Hell Trauma, I don't think it's very graphic but ymmv, Past Rape/Non-con, Self-Loathing, conversations in the middle of the night, new spn fic? from me? in 2021? it's more likely than you think, this isn't exactly dead dove but it's not NOT dead dove
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: "Did they rape you in Hell?"
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	a hundred miles through the desert repenting

**Author's Note:**

> Look, y'all, I'm just as shocked as you that I'm writing in this fandom again, if not more so. But here we are! *shrugs*
> 
> I don't... exactly know what to say about this fic? I think a lot about how Dean and Sam are both almost certainly canonically rape victims, and about how unlikely it is that either one of them would ever admit that to the other. I think a lot about the sorts of things Dean probably did in Hell. (Check the end note if you want a clear warning about that, in re: this fic.) I think a whole lot about what love and forgiveness mean on a scale as big as SPN likes to play with.
> 
> This doesn't fit anywhere in particular on the timeline. It could take place anywhere from season 7 through at least season 14. Title and epigraph from Mary Oliver's _Wild Geese_. ([x](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html))

“Dean,” Sam says. Neither of them has slept in twenty hours. The road hums beneath the car’s wheels, an unspooling ribbon as black as the night around them. Sam’s voice breaks the silence like a shotgun blast.

“Yeah?”

“Did they rape you in Hell?”

It’s like the ground falls out from under him. Dean clenches the steering wheel tight. His foot drifts towards the floor - the car goes faster, faster. He can’t outrun that question.

“Why the _hell_ would you ask me that?” He keeps his eyes on the road, cool and dark and constant. If he looks at Sam, he’ll cleave right in two.

“They did me,” Sam says, and Dean feels himself crack anyway, splintered and uneven like a wishbone. “Michael and Lucifer both. They - “

“ _Shut up._ ”

Sam is silent for a fraction of a second. The stars sparkle in the sky above them like something out of a picture book. “Look, I know you don’t like to talk about it. Hell, I know you don’t want to think about it.”

“Then _why ask me?_ ” His voice is a raw agony.

“Lucifer made me feel good,” Sam says, steady and implacable. The road stretches on. The car goes faster, faster. “He said that, even after everything, all he wanted was for me to feel good. He got off on my begging him. It was better than the torture.”

“ _Sam -_ ”

“Michael was brutal. He tore it from me, time after time. The only thing he had down there was ripping me apart.”

The car’s hum turns to a whine, a scream. If Dean opens his mouth, he’ll scream with it. His brother. His baby brother. The breath rattles in his chest. “Stop talking, Sammy,” he whispers.

“Did they rape you in Hell?” Sam asks again. His voice is calm. Quiet. As undeniable as the darkness pressed close around the car; as vital as the headlights that keep them going. The question is a hook in Dean’s gut, and it’s pulling the answer out. He doesn’t want what comes with it.

“Of course,” he whispers. “Of course they did.” They held his feet to flames and stripped the skin from his flesh. They carved him into pieces and put him back together wrong just to rip him apart again. They did everything to him. Of course they raped him. Of course they did.

They’ve been on this road for hours. They’ll be on this road for hours more. It’s darker inside the car than outside of it, right now.

How many nights like this, Dean wonders distantly, have they lived through?

“You’re not alone,” Sam says. “Neither of us are.”

“I wish I was.” Dean answers, voice torn apart. “I would give anything, _anything_ , for this not to have touched you.”

“It’s too late for that,” Sam says. “It was too late for that a long time ago.”

Dean sighs. “I know.” It’s why Sam kept talking. It’s why Dean let him.

There’s a hunt and darkness behind them. There’s a hunt and darkness ahead. Dean could drive this road with his eyes closed. He’s driven so many just like it before.

He slants a look over at Sam. He’s slumped in the passenger seat, legs akimbo, eyes fixed on the road ahead. His gaze is watery but his cheeks are dry.

Dean would give anything. There’s nothing left to give.

“Alastair - “ he says. His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “Alastair was like Michael.”

The tears in Sam’s eyes spill over. He doesn’t wipe them away.

“I was - “ It doesn’t break, this time. It shatters. He gathers it up, with his courage. “I was more like Lucifer.”

Silence. Dean waits. The moon above them is an unforgiving eye.

“That’s what I guessed,” Sam says, “given what I knew.”

More silence. The road goes on. Dean opens and closes his hands on the wheel. “You knew?”

“I guessed,” Sam repeats, quiet. “I knew some of what you’d done. I knew some of what was done to you. I guessed.” Quiet and gentle, like Dean’s a spooked animal.

Dean’s something far worse.

If he’d stayed in Hell, he knows, he would have stopped hurting eventually. Sam didn’t have even that luxury. His Hell would have been eternal. In some ways, it is.

They are alone in the car. The night hangs heavy around them. Sam’s cheeks still shine in the starlight. “I’m sorry,” Dean says, uselessly.

“I don’t need an apology,” Sam says, so soft it cramps in Dean’s chest. “I would have asked.”

“I am, though.” It’s all he has. He would give anything. There’s nothing left to give. What both of them have suffered, what both of them have done...

All Dean has are his pointless words and this cold, dark night.

“I know,” Sam says. “I know.”

They drive on in silence. The stars start to fade. Dawn is coming.

“Nothing you did down there,” Sam says at last, when the edge of the sky has started to go pale, “could make me love you less.”

For the first time in a long time, they pass an intersection.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Dean says. His voice is rough. They have to get gas in the next town.

“No,” Sam says. “It doesn’t.”

The sky continues to lighten. They pass another intersection, and another. Dean feels a bit as though he’s waking from a dream. The stars blink out above them, one by one. The car purrs. Dean’s hands relax on the wheel.

The sun comes up.

... _You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.  
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
Meanwhile the world goes on._ _..._

**Author's Note:**

> The warning: this fic makes it clear that Dean raped people during his ten years torturing souls in Hell.


End file.
